“The Odyssey” is obsessed with a fear of emasculation.
Tag Archives: Feminism
Odysseus’s Emasculation Anxieties
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged emasculation anxieties, Homer, monsters, Odyssey Comments closed
Lit and Life: My Intellectual Trajectory
I’ve long held that great literature impacts history harder than lesser literature. I trace the evolution of my ideas in today’s post.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Charles Dickens, Denis Diderot, Discourse on Inequality, Hans Robert Jauss, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Letter on the Blind, Martin Chuzzlewit, Marxism, post-colonialism, queer theory, reception theory Comments closed
Pakistani Girl Saved by “Little Women”
Wednesday NPR has done it again. Ira Glass’s recent This American Life episode about a classic novel coming to someone’s rescue reminds me of Morning Edition’s account of Anna Karenina doing the same for an unjustly imprisoned Somali prisoner. (See my account here.) The radio program reported on how Little Women came to the aid […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, Pakistani women, patriarchy Comments closed
Conrad and White Male Panic
Tuesday This is a follow-up to yesterday’s post about how Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness provides special insight into white terrorism. At one point I mentioned Conrad’s own racism and sexism, which leads to an interesting literary question: can we consider a work a literary masterpiece if it has one-dimensional depictions of women and Africans? […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Colonialism, Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, Marxism, white terrorism Comments closed
Morgan Le Faye through the Ages
Monday Last week I finished teaching a short “Wizards and Enchantresses” course for Sewanee’s Lifelong Learning program and thoroughly enjoyed myself. Having already talked about my class on Merlin (see here, here, and here), today I share what I had to say about Morgan Le Faye and her successors. With Morgan, we looked at how […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged "Morte d'Arthur", C. S. Lewis, Edmund Spenser, enchantresses, Faerie Queene, Geoffrey of Monmouth, Gwenhwyfar, Idylls of the King, Life of Merlin, Little Mermaid, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Mercedes Lackey, Mists of Avalon, Morgan Le Faye, Silver Chair, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, T. H. White Comments closed
Does Lit Crit Make Lit Less Fun?
Friday My Ljubljana colleague Jason Blake alerted me to a Chronicle of Higher Education article that wrestles with the question of whether studying literature should be fun. It’s a fairly confused piece, with Baruch College’s Timothy Aubry conflating a number of issues better treated separately. Nevertheless, it’s worth a response because Aubry addresses questions that non-academics […]
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged formalism, ideology, John Keats, Marxism, New Criticism Comments closed
Yes, GOP Is Atticus, but Not in a Good Way
John Cornyn compared the GOP to Atticus Finch? The comparison holds if he has in mind the Atticus of “Go Tell a Watchman.”
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Brett Kavanaugh, Christine Blasey Ford, Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee, Supreme Court hearings Comments closed
Howl’s Empowerment Drama
In “Howl’s Moving Castle,” Diana Wynne Jones breaks free of confining fantasy narratives.
Posted in Uncategorized Also tagged Diana Wynne Jones, empowerment, Howl's Moving Castle Comments closed
